Jisang crossed through the gate without a second thought and walked through the complex at a leisurely pace.

This house held a complicated place in his heart. It was the most valuable piece of the inheritance left by his mother, who had not even allowed him to live here as a proper resident.

Leaving it empty seemed wasteful when he needed somewhere to stay, so he had simply moved in. Part of him had also wondered whether living here might help him understand her.

There were times he would pause at the front door, catching a glimpse of his mother’s shape, as though he were about to walk into a haunted house at an amusement park. The weight on his shoulders never quite lifted.

So there had been many days when he had not wanted to come home. The pointlessly large house was excessively empty.

But lately, the closer he got to home, the more his energy lifted.

Imagining Hari, her hair neatly pinned up, her pale and slender neck exposed, coming to meet him at the door, he found himself smiling without meaning to.

Sure enough, when he stepped inside, Hari was not so different from what he had imagined. She had not come to the door, but she was sitting on the sofa exactly as he had pictured, watching a film on the screen with those pretty eyes of hers.

“You’re back?”

Hari smiled and welcomed him. Her speech was slightly slurred, and only then did he notice the whiskey sitting in front of her.

“Something a little upsetting happened……”

He was half worried, half curious, but he had no intention of prying. If she wanted to talk, she would bring it up herself. With that thought, Jisang said nothing and glanced at the screen instead. Before he could even form a question, Hari answered it for him.

“I love Hong Kong films.”

“Ah.”

“Have you seen this one? It’s incredibly famous.”

“No.”

“Then shall we watch it together?”

Seeing her beam at him as though things had worked out perfectly, Jisang felt the troubles that had been crowding his mind quietly dissolve.

He lay his tired body down beside her, swept back a fallen strand of hair, and exhaled slowly.

The tightness that had been strangling him all day finally began to ease.

“It’s about two heartbroken cops, each with their own story. I love the one about Officer 663 in particular. There’s this legendary scene where California Dreamin’ starts playing and he appears for the first time, and it’s just…… art. Hmm, kind of…… it might be similar to the impact I felt when I first saw you, Cha Jisang. Maybe that’s why I love this film.”

Jisang had been quietly taking in the sweet voice explaining the film to him. He called her name in a low, unhurried voice.

“Yoo Hari.”

He rubbed his face with both hands, the way someone splashes water on themselves without water. Then he narrowed his eyes lazily and tapped the empty space on the sofa between them.

“Come closer.”

Hari shifted her weight and pressed herself against him at once, answering his request without hesitation. She looked up at him with those wide, rabbit-like eyes and asked again.

“Is this enough? Nothing more?”

The way the corners of her mouth stretched into a thin smile was very pretty.

“I could kiss you if you asked.”

But unfortunately for her, Jisang wanted nothing more than this.

“Nothing. Nothing at all.”

Hari asked no more and leaned against him, resting her head against his shoulder and watching the film in silence.

He could not take in a single frame of it.

The soft hair resting on his shoulder stirred his desire without pause. The faint trace of her scent drifted over and made his thoughts go hazy.

He had only wanted to protect her, and somewhere along the way, love had grown.

Then again. Perhaps what had been suppressed from the very beginning had simply broken through at last.

“You’re really not going to do anything, right?”

She lifted her head from his shoulder to ask, and Jisang reached out and cupped her face in his hand.

He pressed a light kiss to her lips, then guided her back to lean against his shoulder. He wanted to lick and bite those lips right then, but he chose to hold that urge back.

He could not ask anything of her.

Nothing except to stay beside him like this, like sunlight.

* * *

“Did something happen?”

After sitting in silence for a long while, Jisang glanced at the empty whiskey glass and asked.

“Hmm……”

Hari hesitated, then finally spoke.

“Do you remember that day? In front of the room salon, when I was crying and asked you for help.”

Jisang gave a small nod.

“I remember.”

“You were…… the first adult who ever scolded me.”

His expression did not change much, but the steady gaze he had been holding on her shifted, just barely.

Hari drew in a small breath and continued in a quieter tone.

“After that day, instead of wanting to be praised by someone, I started thinking first about not wanting to be ashamed in front of anyone. I lived always thinking of you somewhere out there, watching over me.”

She paused for a moment. Hari lowered her gaze slightly and fidgeted with her fingertips.

“Today I suddenly thought, if it hadn’t been for you, I might not be here right now. That I might have met a bad adult, fallen into a bad temptation, and walked a bad path without knowing what was right or wrong.”

Jisang smiled faintly.

“So I just…… wanted to say it again today. Thank you, so much. You must be tired of hearing it from all those letters, but I want to say it again anyway.”

“……”

“And also…… because of that, there’s something I want to say.”

Jisang stroked her hair gently and waited for what came next.

Hari lifted her head and looked at him directly. She seemed to be forcing the corners of her mouth upward, but she could not hide the faint glimmer at the edges of her eyes. At last, her lips parted.

“……I love you.”

Unlike the other children whose names had been plain and unremarkable, Hari had arrived at the orphanage already carrying the pretty name Yoo Hari. The envy of children who disliked their own names had naturally poured onto her.

The only one who had ever taken Hari’s side amid the bullying was Nanhee, two years her senior.

‘Stop picking on Hari. She’s the most pitiful one among us.’

‘What’s so pitiful about her?’

‘She got abandoned when she was already grown. So she’s more pitiful than us.’

‘Oh…… you’re right. She really is pitiful.’

Because of that, Hari had suddenly become the most pitiful child in the orphanage, but young Hari had taken it as Nanhee protecting her.

Of course, now that she was fully grown, she understood it had been little better than gaslighting. Even so, the genuine feeling of being moved that she had felt as a child still remained, strong as ever.

Because of that, even knowing that Nanhee had always poured her inferiority complex onto her, Hari still could not bring herself to hate her.

If there was a hierarchy even in friendship, she knew without question that she was on the lower end of it, but Hari was not the type to calculate and weigh things when it came to people she cared about, so it did not bother her much.

That was why she could brush off the petty things Nanhee had done today without much trouble.

What was hurting her right now was not the argument itself.

‘Everything came easy to you. So why can’t I take the easy road? For someone ugly like me, even this is a precious and rare opportunity.’

Nanhee’s words, that even the sponsorship was her own choice, had left Hari unable to say anything more.

What if she had changed her mind because of something Hari said, and given up on taking Gwak Sanggu’s hand? If that caused her to fade away as an unpopular singer and be forgotten……

She had been quietly afraid of hearing Nanhee blame her for ruining her life by talking her out of it, saying she could have risen to fame that way.

She had not had the courage to take responsibility for another person’s life with a single word.

‘I should have tried harder to convince her……’

Belated self-reproach washed over her, but Nanhee was already gone.

She had come to understand that stepping into someone else’s life was never a simple thing.

‘Promise me. That you’ll walk only the right path. That you won’t set foot in a place like this, and that you’ll succeed proudly through your own strength.’

With that in mind, what Jisang had done six years ago, willingly stepping in to save a stranger and even lecturing her, felt all the more remarkable to her now.